*Official* NBR Desktop Overclocker's Lounge [laptop owners welcome, too]

Thing is, gaming is a pretty big part of the PC community when you talk about tech enthusiasts, because that's the most common need for a high performance PC I think. If Linux shows reduced compatibility & reduced performance with games compared to Win 10, then it's not really a 'go' for a lot of people. Am I right in thinking it's reduced compatibility & reduced performance in terms of games? I'm thinking Linux doesn't have DX12? Mind you DX12 is often worse performing than DX11 in games, I'm not even sure DX12 is the future, what's the next future after DX11 I wonder.

 

That's true. Unfortunately I use w10 only for gaming, however, Linux has come a long way with gaming where in some games it's 1:1 to windows...

Check this out... ( @Mr. Fox @Vasudev ...) ...it's really impressive how close (pretty much on par in the real world) KVM is to the native host machine. We're talking 95-98% of the performance on VM, which is really good and makes zero difference in the real world...

The future looks bright... Long live Linux and I hope to see it thrive.

 

I'll try KVM, I used AQEMU and it was damn fast on crap hardware with pentium cpu. I switched to VMware Linux version after Windows version wasn't updated to support v1903 and VMware linux is faster and experience is much better than NVMe on SATA drive. Everything is working now!

 

Yes, that is really close. Pretty amazing. But, I don't really see a good reason to run a virtual machine. I'd rather just eliminate Windows 10 altogether, but until I can I like multi-booting better. That way I can ignore it unless or until I need to use it for something specific. The ONLY reason I would actually "need" it is for a limited number of benchmarks that require it. Otherwise, Windows 10 is utterly worthless to me and there is no point in its existence. It may as well not exist, because it's a piece of crap.

I already have eliminated Windows 10 completely on my laptop. Obviously, I don't use it for benching. It's not a high performance product. I clean installed everything last night on the HP ZBook and now it is triple booting W7, Linux Mint 19 Cinnamon and CloudReady... no trace of the sucky Windoze OS X cancer filth left on my laptop.

 

Very nice...windows 10 a piece of crap indeed. Lol

Are you running Linux mint with cinnamon?

 

Amen Brotha!!


Microsofts Track record according to Raiderman

Windows 3.11.........Ground breaking, clunky, but a huge step forward
Windows 95.........New Gui, buggy at times, but usable
Windows 98........Awesome most of the time
Windows Me........Trash, crap, kitty box liner
Windows 2000........Rock solid, best windows to date by far
Windows XP........Great OS if you could look past the Garfield type gui (comic strip)(cartoon)
Windows Vista.......Aesthetically beautiful, but very buggy, and unusable unless you had top of the line hardware.
Windows 7........The holy grail of Windows
Windows 8.1...........A complete train wreck
Windows 10.........A train wreck colliding head on with an airline disaster, followed by a natural disaster.

 

Yes. That is the distro I have always favored and have been playing with it off and on again for at least 8 years, probably longer. It is always better than it used to be every time I decide to tinker with it. It had been a couple of years since I had last played around with it and I can see that it is smoother and easier to use. The gaps in time probably make the improvements easier to spot. It has come a long way from when I first started tinkering with Linux back in the late 90's.

Running Knoppix from CD-ROM on a company laptop was my first Linux experience. That was back when I only owned desktops and I ran Knoppix on the company laptop so I could surf the web while traveling for business. (That was frowned on... using company laptop for personal use.) That was back in the days of dial-up and that was a real pain in the butt to figure out through trial and error. Internal laptop modems were not very easy for a DOS/Windows noob to configure in Linux, especially so when you needed to be able to search the web for help and could not get online to actually do the research, LOL. There was a LOT of trial and error.

 

Interesting. I removed the mSATA CloudReady (ChromeOS) was installed on so installing Windows 7 and Linux on the SATA SSD would not mess with it. BUT, Linux Mint "found" CloudReady later on (after I put the mSATA back in) and automatically updated the Grub2 menu. It called it "unknown Linux" but I tested it and it booted CloudReady perfectly. So, I renamed the menu entry that shows in Grub2 since it isn't really unknown to me.

 

Ah yes one of the nice things about Linux...is that it creates a partition where it stores boot related files, but keeps it completely separate to the rest of the main partitions os that it doesn't mess up anything, unlike windoze lol. Pretty neat eh...

Nice set up there...

 

That's completely false. Windows 7 and higher use the same ESP partition as Linux. That's the standard set by the EFI board for easier deployment for ARM,Solaris,AMD64,Power9, Rasp. Pi etc...

 

Are we talking about the same thing? Linux creates its boot partition more isolated from the rest a little differently than Windoze so no that's not completely false.

If you were to install windoze with multiple drives in it would mess things up as it places the elements of the boot partition onto other areas, which is the point that I was making in emphasizing that Linux is much smarter in that sense.

 

Well, if its isolated it creates more problems than windows 10.
You need to follow Ubuntu and MSFT's guide for disk layout.
EFI/ESP(260-500MB) -> Recovery Partition(Windows/OEM) [500MB for stock windows and 11-18GB for OEM]->Windows data partition aka C drive: -> Linux root partition -> Swap space [This is the layout for multi-OS on single disk)
For dual or more disk with different OS: You need to physically unplug/replug the drives before and after installing any OS, otherwise it sharesthe first disk's ESP because acc. to standards only one ESP is allowed during online OS servicing.
ESPs(200MB on each disk) -> Recovery(windows 500Megs)->Windows Data/Linux root partition-> Swap file(on Linux only)

 

Yes that's correct and I'm well aware of that, but my original point is that Linux is much smarter when it comes to being able to recognize previous installs of (any) OS, whereas Windoze would throw a fit if you didn't have all the original SSD's installed when the windoze was first installed as it messes up the boot manager order and files.

This is why @Mr. Fox was able to simply rename the Linux install that grub2 recognized, whereas windoze would have thrown a fit. - Again, my main emphasis being that Linux is much cleaner and smarter than windoze. That's all I had meant and in recognizing how neat it was that he was able to simply rename it due to Linux being superior in that sense.

 

Again, what is true, but I was simply emphasizing the fact that Linux is much smarter in being able to recognize prior installs and to retain the respect data to be able to recognize previous installs.

 

New PR with the Area 51M ... it keeps getting better.

Mind you that this is all just sitting at my desk, locked bios, limited RAM capped at 2400 and with power limits. + At only 5.2GHz ... I'm working on tuning 5.3GHz and once I get that dialed in......... even more of a victory than what it has already shown to be able to achieve at its current state.

Fire Strike (PR): 26284

 

Not really though, Windows is much smarter and works with wide variety of devices. MSFT is the one that has large commits in Linux github with ReFS and other MS related proprietary stuffs. Win 7 early revisions always wiped out grub2 and only 8.1 and 10 played safe w/o needing grub reinstall. If you have updated W7 ISO 2017 and above, the installer logic has been updated to reflect that change that plays safe with Linux.

 

Did you update 3dmark to latest version? If updated you might see some added scores just because of RTX hardware.
Can you run AIDA64 RAM test? I think dual sticks can use 2667MHz and 4 sticks limits to 2400MHz? Can you check if you've spare HyperX RAM sticks with Sammy B die?

 

That is because M$ is working within its own territory, whereas with Linux and because it is open source with much better attention to detail, it can recognize beyond what it is familiar with.

We can agree to disagree, but you know that I hate Windoze as it is utter rubbish in my books.

More than my personal opinions though, Linux is Open Source so it will always be far superior to the close sourced crap of M$ and it's inferior prodigies (windoze).

 

Ah the thing is that with the Area 51M I'm capped at 2400MHz RAM + 5.2GHz at the moment .... all the while this is what makes the AW Area 51M even more impressive in that it is able to achieve all of this and flying right at the same altitude as the clevo p870tm with it being limited to the 2400 RAM, locked bios and power limits.

The clevo p870tm does not have any of this... it has a fully unlocked bios, RAM at 2667MHz and without the power limit constraints.(Prema Magic.

At this point the AW Area 51M has already beat out the clevo p870tm hands down when you factor in the handicap that it has....and in the real world it makes ZERO difference. At least with the A51M you get a much better built system and with a warranty that is far superior...

However, even with this handicap I'm determined to beat the clevo p870tm once and for all (the current top score at the time of this post)... It's only a matter of time... I'm focused on tuning 5.3GHz, because my graphics scores already demolishes clevo gpu scores overall. The only thing holding this A51M back right now is the CPU... but mind you I'm working with a locked environment... so in that regard the A51M has already surpassed the clevo p870tm as being the 'overall' best DTR to date...Period.

I haven't even touched ac yet lol... yes really.... this has all been just on my desk so far... so yea.... for what it's worth...

At the end of the day.. .all good fun and for the LOVE of the sport!

 

I am not booting GPT with EFI. I am running MBR for Windows+Linux. I had to temporarily enable UEFI+CSM for the ChromeOS because it requires GPT. It creates a bazillion partitions for God knows what kind of stupid reasons, (more than 20 LOL). But, I am going to get rid of that (yes, I am done playing with it) and flip the BIOS back to Legacy mode because that's my preference. Then I will diskpart the mSATA and convert it back to MBR. CloudReady runs well enough from a USB flash drive that that there is no point in wasting any precious internal drive space on it.

 

Clevo p870 has 9900K and RTX 2080 MXM?

 

You better stick with GPT instead of MBR because GPT has fallback MBR code compatibility. GPT can correct disk errors on the fly w/o even needing to run chkdsk or fsck. I switched all MBR (except USB flash drives) to GPT. Its near corruption free and plays nice with MBR too.
[With ref. to ChromiumOS]That's how Linux enthuasiasts configure partitions back when Linux was not known, every partition is separated or scattered over disk platter to ensure any upgrades won't affect anything. I can't do it because its tedious and I prefer single /(root) partition with everything and only boot loader are on ESP.

 

P870TM1

 

Okay. Hmmm, Prema modded BIOS or stock BIOS?

 

I prefer MBR and Legacy BIOS option. And, I have already switched back since my post.

 

I was using GPT with Legacy, didn't know for 3 years on old laptop until I booted Sergei strelec Win 10 ISO. Haha....

 

Yes, you can do that and I have done it myself. In fact, I have my desktop running in Legacy BIOS mode with the 4TB HDD configured as GPT. Until my last OS reinstalls, I had the NVMe drives for Windows 7 and 10 configured as GPT as well, while the BIOS was in Legacy mode. At my last OS reinstalls I put them back to MBR. And, it works fine. I only like to use GPT when I am using a drive too large for MBR (i.e. 2GB or greater). Well... I don't know that like is the right word, but it is a functional limitation for MBR and whether I like it or not is irrelevant, LOL. I don't want or need the extra partition capacity of GPT and I just like MBR better overall.

 

Here's what the bios of my LG Gram 15 looks like. (It's my main daily driver running Linux Mint 19.1 w/ Cinnamon on one m.2 NVMe and Windoze on the other m.2 NVMe slot.)

This thing is so compatible and friendly with anything you throw at it and it doesn't throw a fit.. it just works.

 

I think its a bug, If you enable UEFI boot legacy OS boot should be disabled, otherwise it'll load pure EFI GOP and other EFI crap that will confuse older OS like W7. If you did install W7 I think its a BIOS UI bug.

 

It must be a good bug, because everything works flawlessly.

 

That causes issues with ACPI in the long run and provide incorrect values to Linux. Try with script and make Linux report it is windows 10. http://iam.tj/prototype/enhancements/Windows-acpi_osi.html
I gained 20-30mins of extra battery on Lenovos and on my AW and both were unoptimised.

 

I disable ACPI whenever there is an option to do so. I suspect what @iunlock is doing is Samsung's way of implementing UEFI with CSM support, which works fantastic. That gives you the best of both worlds and, as an added bonus, it breaks Secure Boot feces.

 

Actually ACPI is never disabled. The script I linked above just masks Linux to report it as Win 8.1/10 depending on how/what BIOS was configured to work best on specific win version. It just says Hey, I'm Windows 2013 aka 8.1 or even Windows 2015/17/18/19/20/3000 aka Windows 10. I actually you were that inferior Linux and tried to use scare tactics with random ACPI erratas to force people to use Windows only.! Haha..

 

I clocked in 10 hours of battery the other day on the LG Gram 15. A lot of web stuff and working in gimp (photo editor). This thing is impressive.

Bingo.

 

If your BIOS has settings available, you can disable many ACPI features. It doesn't remove ACPI, but it kills those features. And, that's what I do. I do not want ACPI or ASPM or LPM features, or anything else that facilitates autonomous power saving features or entering a low power state. I also reconfigure my Windows power management profiles to disable power saving features, disable c-states and go through everything in Device Manager and uncheck boxes on the devices with a Power Management tab.

 

That could be an advantage for benching (I don't know how much?), but if you're using your PC all day or if you choose to leave it switched on all day that's a fair bit of wasted power - what's your KillaWatt idle power measurement on your beast when it has all that power management switched off?

 

I never pay any attention to it. I just now went into my office to look before replying. Around 315W... fluctuating 2-5W above and below that.

 

Wow, that's a lot for idle power consumption! I know it's not a factor for you because you turn off your PC when you're not using it, and I'm guessing you don't use it for hours & hours at a time, but for folks that use their PC's all day or just like to leave the system on all day - a 315W idle power consumption is not really sensible, so disabling all power saving features on every single component within a PC is not sensible/practical in that situation.

Have you ever quantified the difference in performance between all power savings features off vs say a standard Windows High Performance Plan? From my own testing on various power saving features I've found the best combination to be High Performance Power Plan with the addition of motherboard BIOS enabled C-states (but allowing cores to enter C-states, but ensuring that CPU Package remains in C0 high performance state). I did some testing re responsiveness & performance of different power savings options in this thread to reach my conclusions: http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...eatures-vs-performance-responsiveness.803030/

As a side note, I found that enabling C-states did not affect my max stable CPU overclock, I had heard that it could affect it, but in my case I couldn't overclock higher by just using static voltages and no C-states.

 

You meant ACPI power savings Hahaa... Its okay the difference isn't too high with power savings enabled on SKL-X CPUs. With power savings enabled you will see only meagre 20-50w reduction in power when idle but soon peaks to higher wattage upon usage. For consistent performance, its better to turn off power savings when you're clocking 5GHz and 2GHz-2.5GHz on RTX 2080's.

 

Try this cmd in terminal. You can hit Tab key after typing profile to get a list of power plans. I use balanced, throughput-performance & laptop batter powersave(battery). You can get 20-50mins of extra runtime.

Code:

tuned-adm profile balanced

 

From your tests...

Variables tested:
-Windows Power Plan settings
-C-States enabled/disabled
-Speed Shift enabled/disabled

Configurations tested:
A) Windows Balanced Power Profile / C-states disabled (my initial configuration historically)
B) Windows High Performance Power Plan / C-states enabled down to Package C6 (cores enter C7) (end result is that frequency locked at 4.5Ghz yet voltages lower at idle).
C) Windows High Performance Power Plan / C-states disabled / SpeedShift enabled by using Throttlestop program @EPP=78

Have you tested setup C) with @EPP=0 ?

I know the goal for you was voltage drop when idle. But wasn't the goal also test out what will give max performance?

 

It is turned on all day, 7 days a week. Because I work from home at a desk job, it gets used throughout the day (right next to my workstation) and then after work I am playing with it. I turn it off when I go to bed every day or when I am out of town on a business trip. I literally never use sleep or hibernation (have the latter disabled completely in Windows using powercfg -h off command and also disable those features in BIOS). I have never really compared because this is how I configure all of my systems as a matter of preference.

 

https://hwbot.org/submission/4124152_

New AMD driver is Rocking the graphics score!

 

From memory, yes I think I did test EPP=0, and I don't think the frequency dropped at all, so power savings didn't happen. The benefit of C-states is that the frequency doesn't drop, just the voltage as parts of the CPU are 'put to sleep' - for me it gave the same performance as 'the full fat version' but with the benefit of low idle power consumption.

Wow, I'm surprised you run it at 300 odd Watt all day (ie idle power consumption) - that's a lot of extra electricity consumption, and added heat in the Summer of course too. Is it worth running it like that? You might be surprised that C-states might not ruin your performance, they don't on mine? If you were to run C-states on your CPU & allow your GPUs to downclock, I'm thinking you could get idle power consumption down to below 100W easily, maybe even below 50W. If there's no performance difference then it's gotta be worth doing surely.

Or one BIOS profile for Work, and then another saved BIOS profile for benching - accessed by a quick reboot. Save the Planet, & the Wallet, & the room temperature/air con Mr Fox! ;-)

 

Pretty sad that in another 2 to 3 months, Navi will be out, along with Ryzen 3xxx, and the water block was just released for the Radeon VII

 

By then Vega 7 will have optimised driver whilst Navi driver is still an infant at early stages.

 

My GPU downclocks. It has been running for about 4 hours since I got up this morning. 5.1GHz on the CPU with c-states disabled. With Chrome open it is 320W. But, the temps are fine. Having such an abnormally high coolant volume capacity in my loop probably helps. When my ambient temps go up in the hottest months, I just drop the multiplier by switching to my saved 4.7, 4.8 or 5.0GHz BIOS profiles.

These temps are also with half of the fans turned off. I am only using the 6 "push" fans during normal use. I turn on the 6 "pull" fans for gaming, then the chiller (of course) gets fired up for benching.

 

Good temps, but dang that's still a lot of power!

For your Summer months when you're not benching and instead using it for gaming & office, if you did have C-states enabled then temperatures would likely be fine even at your 5.1Ghz, because partial load power consumption would be lower - that way you could get away with using 5.1Ghz in the Summer (I'm assuming without the water chiller) for everything except benching. So there could be some positive performance attributes of running C-states, meaning that you wouldn't have to resort to 4.7Ghz in the Summer. Just an idea, but would require testing to see if feasible or not.

 

I'll see what happens. I don't expect to see a whole lot of change in performance... maybe none. Part of it is a personal hang-up for me and done, in part, out of spite. I like seeing a static clock speed for the value I set in the BIOS. Plus, I am philosophically adverse to the concept of saving power as a primary goal of utmost importance because that pop-culture Utopian nonsense has done so much to taint so many industries... computers, cars, household appliances, etc. So many things have been downgraded for the sole purpose of satisfying some weirdo tree-hugger agenda that I am like... you know what, screw 'em all... I'll use as much as I want to... electricity, gasoline, coal, wood... whatever the fuel is... not going to have these whacko nuts-jobs telling me how to do things only because they choose to believe in leprechauns and unicorns.

 

Man, is there no end to the foolishness, lies and nonsense in the land of laptops?